Christopher and Columbus by Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

C >> Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim >> Christopher and Columbus

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He then shut it, and came back to his seat at the table.

"Yes, Mr. Twist?" he said, settling down again. "You were inquiring what
the hell--?"

"Well, I was about to," said Mr. Twist, suddenly soothed, "but you're so
calm--"

"Of course I'm calm. I'm a quietly married man."

"I don't see what that's got to do with it."

"Everything. For some dispositions, everything. Mine is one. Yours is
another."

"Well, I guess I've not come here to talk about marriage. What I want to
know is why--"

"Quite so," said the lawyer, as he stopped. "And I can tell you. It's
because your inn is suspected of being run in the interests of the
German Government."

A deep silence fell upon the room. The lawyer watched Mr. Twist with a
detached and highly intelligent interest. Mr. Twist stared at the
lawyer, his kind, lavish lips fallen apart. Anger had left him. This
blow excluded anger. There was only room in him for blank astonishment.

"You know about my teapot?" he said at last.

"Try me again, Mr. Twist."

"It's on every American breakfast table."

"Including my own."

"They wouldn't use it if they thought--"

"My dear sir, they're not going to," said the lawyer. "They're
proposing, among other little plans for conveying the general sentiment
to your notice, to boycott the teapot. It is to be put on an unofficial
black list. It is to be banished from the hotels."

Mr. Twist's stare became frozen. The teapot boycotted? The teapot his
mother and sister depended on and The Open Arms depended on, and all his
happiness, and the twins? He saw the rumour surging over America in
great swift waves, that the proceeds of the Twist Non-Trickler were used
for Germany. He saw--but what didn't he see in that moment of submerged
horror? Then he seemed to come to the surface again and resume reason
with a gasp. "Why?" he asked.

"Why they're wanting to boycott the teapot?"

"No. Why do they think the inn--"

"The Miss Twinklers are German."

"Half."

"The half that matters--begging my absent wife's pardon. I know all
about that, you see. You started me off thinking them over by that ward
notion of yours. It didn't take me long. It was pretty transparent. So
transparent that my opinion of the intelligence of my fellow-townsfolk
has considerably lowered. But we live in unbalanced times. I guess it's
women at the bottom of this. Women got on to it first, and the others
caught the idea as they'd catch scarlet fever. It's a kind of scarlet
fever, this spy scare that's about. Mind you, I admit the germs are
certainly present among us." And the lawyer smiled. He thought he saw
he had made a little joke in that last remark.

Mr. Twist was not in the condition to see jokes, and didn't smile. "Do
you mean to say those children--" he began.

"They're not regarded as children by any one except you."

"Well, if they're not," said Mr. Twist, remembering the grass by the
wayside in the lane and what he had so recently met in it, "I guess I'd
best be making tracks. But I know better. And so would you if you'd seen
them on the boat. Why, twelve was putting their age too high on that
boat."

"No doubt. No doubt. Then all I can say is they've matured pretty
considerably since. Now do you really want me to tell you what is being
believed?"

"Of course. It's what I've come for."

"You mayn't find it precisely exhilarating, Mr. Twist."

"Go ahead."

"What Acapulco says--and Los Angeles, I'm told, too, and probably by
this time the whole coast--is that you threw over your widowed mother,
of whom you're the only son, and came off here with two German girls who
got hold of you on the boat--now, Mr. Twist, don't interrupt--on the
boat crossing from England, that England had turned them out as
undesirable aliens--quite so, Mr. Twist, but let me finish--that they're
in the pay of the German Government--no doubt, no doubt, Mr. Twist--and
that you're their cat's-paw. It is known that the inn each afternoon has
been crowded with Germans, among them Germans already suspected, I can't
say how rightly or how wrongly, of spying, and that these people are so
familiar with the Miss von Twinklers as to warrant the belief in a
complete secret understanding."

For a moment Mr. Twist continued both his silence and his stare. Then he
took off his spectacles and wiped them. His hand shook. The lawyer was
startled. Was there going to be emotion? One never knew with that sort
of lips. "You're not--" he began.

Then he saw that Mr. Twist was trying not to laugh.

"I'm glad you take it that way," he said, relieved but surprised.

"It's so darned funny," said Mr. Twist, endeavouring to compose his
features. "To anybody who knows those twins it's so darned funny.
Cat's-paw. Yes--rather feel that myself. Cat's-paw. That does seem a bit
of a bull's eye--" And for a second or two his features flatly refused
to compose.

The lawyer watched him. "Yes," he said. "Yes. But the effect of these
beliefs may be awkward."

"Oh, damned," agreed Mr. Twist, going solemn again.

And there came over him in a flood the clear perception of what it would
mean,--the sheer disaster of it, the horrible situation those helpless
Annas would be in. What a limitless fool he must have been in his
conduct of the whole thing. His absorption in the material side of it
had done the trick. He hadn't been clever enough, not imaginative
enough, nor, failing that, worldly enough to work the other side
properly. When he found there was no Dellogg he ought to have insisted
on seeing Mrs. Dellogg, intrusion or no intrusion, and handing over the
twins; and then gone away and left them. A woman was what was wanted.
Fool that he was to suppose that he, a man, an unmarried man, could get
them into anything but a scrape. But he was so fond of them. He just
couldn't leave them. And now here they all were, in this ridiculous and
terrible situation.

"There are two things you can do," said the lawyer.

"Two?" said Mr. Twist, looking at him with anxious eyes. "For the life
of me I can't see even one. Except running amoke in slander actions--"

"Tut, tut," said the lawyer, waving that aside. "No. There are two
courses to pursue. And they're not alternative, but simultaneous. You
shut down the inn--at once, to-morrow--that's Saturday. Close on
Saturday, and give notice you don't re-open--now pray let me
finish--close the inn as an inn, and use it simply as a private
residence. Then, as quick as may be, marry those girls."

"Marry what girls?"

"The Miss von Twinklers."

Mr. Twist stared at him. "Marry them?" he said helplessly. "Marry them
who to?"

"You for one."

Mr. Twist stared at him in silence. Then he said, "You've said that to
me before."

"Yep. And I'll say it again. I'll go on saying it till you've done it."

"'Well, if that's all you've got to offer as a suggestion for a way
out--"

But Mr. Twist wasn't angry this time; he was too much battered by
events; he hadn't the spirits to be angry.

"You've--got to--marry--one--of--those--girls," said the lawyer, at each
word smiting the table with his open palm. "Turn her into an American.
Get her out of this being a German business. And be able at the same
time to protect the one who'll be your sister in-law. Why, even if you
didn't want to, which is sheer nonsense, for of course any man would
want to--I know what I'm talking about because I've seen them--it's your
plain duty, having got them into this mess."

"But--marry which?" asked Mr. Twist, with increased helplessness and yet
a manifest profound anxiety for further advice.

For the first time the lawyer showed impatience "Oh--either or both," he
said. "For God's sake don't be such a--"

He pulled up short.

"I didn't quite mean that," he resumed, again calm. "The end of that
sentence was, as no doubt you guess, fool. I withdraw it, and will
substitute something milder. Have you any objection to ninny?"

No, Mr. Twist didn't mind ninny, or any other word the lawyer might
choose, he was in such a condition of mental groping about. He took out
his handkerchief and wiped away the beads on his forehead and round his
mouth.

"I'm thirty-five," he said, looking terribly worried.

Propose to an Anna? The lawyer may have seen them, but he hadn't heard
them; and the probable nature of their comments if Mr. Twist proposed to
them--to one, he meant of course, but both would comment, the one he
proposed to and the one he didn't--caused his imagination to reel. He
hadn't much imagination; he knew that now, after his conduct of this
whole affair, but all there was of it reeled.

"I'm thirty-five," he said helplessly.

"Pooh," said the lawyer, indicating the negligibleness of this by a
movement of his shoulder.

"They're seventeen," said Mr. Twist.

"Pooh," said the lawyer again, again indicating negligibleness. "My
wife was--"

"I know. You told me that last time. Oh, I know all _that_" said Mr.
Twist with sudden passion. "But these are children. I tell you they're
_children_--"

"Pooh," said the lawyer a third time, a third time indicating
negligibleness.

Then he got up and held out his hand. "Well, I've told you," he said.
"You wanted to know, and I've told you. And I'll tell you one thing
more, Mr. Twist. Whichever of those girls takes you, you'll have the
sweetest, prettiest wife of any man in the world except one, and that's
the man who has the luck to get the other one. Why, sweetest and
prettiest are poor words. She'll be the most delectable, the most--"

Mr. Twist rose from his chair in such haste that he pushed the table
crooked. His ears flamed.

"See here," he said very loud. "I won't have you talk familiarly like
that about my wife."

CHAPTER XXXVI

Wife. The word had a remarkable effect on him. It churned him all up.
His thoughts were a chaotic jumble, and his driving on the way home
matched them. He had at least three narrow shaves at cross streets
before he got out of the town and for an entire mile afterwards he was
on the wrong side of the road. During this period, deep as he was in
confused thought, he couldn't but vaguely notice the anger on the faces
of the other drivers and the variety and fury of their gesticulations,
and it roused a dim wonder in him.

Wife. How arid existence had been for him up to then in regard to the
affections, how knobbly the sort of kisses he had received in Clark.
They weren't kisses; they were disapproving pecks. Always disapproving.
Always as if he hadn't done enough, or been enough, or was suspected of
not going to do or be enough.

His wife. Mr. Twist dreadfully longed to kiss somebody,--somebody kind
and soft, who would let herself be adored. She needn't even love
him,--he knew he wasn't the sort of man to set passion alight; she need
only be kind, and a little fond of him, and let him love her, and be his
very own.

His own little wife. How sweet. How almost painfully sweet. Yes. But the
Annas....

When he thought of the Annas, Mr. Twist went damp. He might
propose--indeed, everything pointed to his simply having got to--but
wouldn't they very quickly dispose? And then what? That lawyer seemed to
think all he had to do was to marry them right away; not them, of
course,--one; but they were so very plural in his mind. Funny man,
thought Mr. Twist; funny man,--yet otherwise so sagacious. It is true he
need only propose to one of them, for which he thanked God, but he could
imagine what that one, and what the other one too, who would be sure to
be somewhere quite near would ... no, he couldn't imagine; he preferred
not to imagine.

Mr. Twist's dampness increased, and a passing car got his mud-guard. It
was a big car which crackled with language as it whizzed on its way, and
Mr. Twist, slewed by the impact half across the road, then perceived on
which side he had been driving.

The lane up to the inn was in its middle-day emptiness and somnolence.
Where Anna-Felicitas and Elliott had been sitting cool and shaded when
he passed before, there was only the pressed-down grass and crushed
flowers in a glare of sun. She had gone home long ago of course. She
said she was going to be very busy. Secretly he wished she hadn't gone
home, and that little Christopher too might for a bit be somewhere else,
so that when he arrived he wouldn't immediately have to face everybody
at once. He wanted to think; he wanted to have time to think; time
before four o'clock came, and with four o'clock, if he hadn't come to
any conclusion about shutting up the inn--and how could he if nobody
gave him time to think?--those accursed, swarming Germans. It was they
who had done all this. Mr. Twist blazed into sudden fury. They and their
blasted war....

At the gate stood Anna-Rose. Her face looked quite pale in the green
shade of the tunnelled-out syringa bushes. She as peering out down the
lane watching him approach. This was awful, thought Mr. Twist. At the
very gate one of them. Confronted at once. No time, not a minute's time
given him to think.

"Oh," cried out Anna-Rose the instant he pulled up, for she had waved to
him to stop when he tried to drive straight on round to the stable, "she
isn't with you?"

"Who isn't?" asked Mr. Twist.

Anna-Rose became paler than ever. "She has been kidnapped," she said.

"How's that?" said Mr. Twist, staring at her from the car.

"Kidnapped," repeated Anna-Rose, with wide-open horror-stricken eyes;
for from her nursery she carried with her at the bottom of her mind,
half-forgotten but ready to fly up to the top at any moment of panic, an
impression that the chief activities and recreations of all those
Americans who weren't really good were two: they lynched, and they
kidnapped. They lynched you if they didn't like you enough, and if they
liked you too much they kidnapped you. Anna-Felicitas, exquisite and
unsuspecting, had been kidnapped. Some American's concupiscent eye had
alighted on her, observed her beauty, and marked her down. No other
explanation was possible of a whole morning's absence from duties of one
so conscientious and painstaking as Anna-Felicitas. She never shirked;
that is, she never had been base enough to shirk alone. If there was any
shirking to be done they had always done it together. As the hours
passed and she didn't appear, Anna-Rose had tried to persuade herself
that she must have motored into Acapulco with Mr. Twist, strange and
unnatural and reprehensible and ignoble as such arch shirking would have
been; and now that the car had come back empty except for Mr. Twist she
was convinced the worst had happened--her beautiful, her precious
Columbus had been kidnapped.

"Kidnapped," she said again, wringing her hands.

Mr. Twist was horror-struck too, for he thought she was announcing the
kidnapping of Mrs. Bilton. Somehow he didn't think of Anna-Felicitas; he
had seen her too recently. But that Mrs. Bilton should be kidnapped
seemed to him to touch the lowest depths of American criminal enterprise
and depravity. At the same time though he recoiled before this fresh
blow a thought did fan through his mind with a wonderful effect of
coolness and silence,--"Then they'll gag her," he said.

"What?" cried Anna-Rose, as though a whip had lashed her. "Gag her?" And
pulling open the gate and running out to him as one possessed she cried
again, "Gag Columbus?"

"Oh that's it, is it," said Mr. Twist, with relief but also with
disappointment, "Well, if it's that way I can tell you--"

He stopped; there was no need to tell her; for round the bend of the
lane, walking bare-headed in the chequered light and shade as leisurely
as if such things as tours of absence didn't exist, or a distracted
household, or an anguished Christopher, with indeed, a complete, an
extraordinary serenity, advanced Anna-Felicitas.

Always placid, her placidity at this moment had a shining quality. Still
smug, she was now of a glorified smugness. If one could imagine a lily
turned into a god, or a young god turned into a lily and walking down
the middle of a sun-flecked Californian lane, it wouldn't be far out,
thought Mr. Twist, as an image of the advancing Twinkler. The god would
be so young that he was still a boy, and he wouldn't be worrying much
about anything in the past or in the future, and he'd just be coming
along like that with the corners of his mouth a little turned up, and
his fair hair a little ruffled, and his charming young face full of a
sober and abstracted radiance.

"Not much kidnapping there, I guess," said Mr. Twist with a jerk of his
thumb. "And you take it from me, Anna I.," he added quickly, leaning
over towards her, determined to get off to the garage before he found
himself faced by both twins together, "that when next your imagination
gets the jumps the best thing you can do is to hold on to it hard till
it settles down again, instead of wasting your time and ruining your
constitution going pale."

And he started the Ford with a bound, and got away round the corner into
the yard.

Here, in the yard, was peace; at least for the moment. The only living
thing in it was a cat the twins had acquired, through the services of
one of the experts, as an indispensable object in a really homey home.
The first thing this cat had done had been to eat the canary, which gave
the twins much unacknowledged relief. It was, they thought secretly,
quite a good plan to have one's pets inside each other,--it kept them so
quiet. She now sat unmoved in the middle of the yard, carefully cleaning
her whiskers while Mr. Twist did some difficult fancy driving in order
to get into the stable without inconveniencing her.

Admirable picture of peace, thought Mr. Twist with a sigh of envy.

He might have got out and picked her up, but he was glad to manoeuvre
about, reversing and making intricate figures in the dust, because it
kept him longer away from the luncheon-table. The cat took no notice of
him, but continued to deal with her whiskers even when his front wheel
was within two inches of her tail, for though she hadn't been long at
The Open Arms she had already sized up Mr. Twist and was aware that he
wouldn't hurt a fly.

Thanks to her he had a lot of trouble getting the Ford into the stable,
all of which he liked because of that luncheon-table; and having got it
in he still lingered fiddling about with it, examining its engine and
wiping its bonnet; and then when he couldn't do that any longer he went
out and lingered in the yard, looking down at the cat with his hands in
his pockets. "I must think," he kept on saying to himself.

"Lunchee," said Li Koo, putting his head out of the kitchen window.

"All right," said Mr. Twist.

He stooped down as though to examine the cat's ear. The cat, who didn't
like her ears touched but was prepared to humour him, got out of it by
lying down on her back and showing him her beautiful white stomach. She
was a black cat, with a particularly beautiful white stomach, and she
had discovered that nobody could see it without wanting to stroke it.
Whenever she found herself in a situation that threatened to become
disagreeable she just lay down and showed her stomach. Human beings in
similar predicaments can only show their tact.

"Nice pussy--nice, nice pussy," said Mr. Twist aloud, stroking this
irresistible object slowly, and forgetting her ear as she had intended
he should.

"Lunchee get cold," said Li Koo, again putting his head out of the
kitchen window. "Mis' Bilton say, Come in."

"All right," said Mr. Twist.

He straightened himself and looked round the yard. A rake that should
have been propped up against the tool-shed with some other gardening
tools had fallen down. He crossed over and picked it up and stood it up
carefully again.

Li Koo watched him impassively from the window.

"Mis' Bilton come out," he said; and there she was in the yard door.

"Mr. Twist," she called shrilly, "if you don't come in right away and
have your food before it gets all mushed up with cold I guess you'll be
sorry."

"All right--coming," he called back very loud and cheerfully, striding
towards her as one strides who knows there is nothing for it now but
courage. "All right, Mrs. Bilton--sorry if I've kept you waiting. You
shouldn't have bothered about me--"

And saying things like this in a loud voice, for to hear himself being
loud made him feel more supported, he strode into the house, through the
house, and out on to the verandah.

They always lunched on the verandah. The golden coloured awning was
down, and the place was full of a golden shade. Beyond it blazed the
garden. Beneath it was the flower-adorned table set as usual ready for
four, and he went out to it, strung up to finding the Annas at the
table, Anna-Felicitas in her usual seat with her back to the garden, her
little fair head outlined against the glowing light as he had seen it
every day since they had lived in the inn, Anna-Rose opposite, probably
volubly and passionately addressing her.

And there was no one.

"Why--" he said, stopping short.

"Yes. It's real silly of them not to come and eat before everything is
spoilt," said Mrs. Bilton bustling up, who had stayed behind to give an
order to Li Koo. And she went to the edge of the verandah and shaded her
eyes and called, "Gurls! Gurls! I guess you can do all that talking
better after lunch."

He then saw that down at the bottom of the garden, in the most private
place as regards being overheard, partly concealed by some arum lilies
that grew immensely there like splendid weeds, stood the twins facing
each other.

"Better leave them alone," he said quickly. "They'll come when they're
ready. There's nothing like getting through with one's talking right
away, Mrs. Bilton. Besides," he went on still more quickly for she
plainly didn't agree with him and was preparing to sally out into the
sun and fetch them in, "you and I don't often get a chance of a quiet
chat together--"

And this, combined with the resolute way he was holding her chair ready
for her, brought Mrs. Bilton back under the awning again.

She was flattered. Mr. Twist had not yet spoken to her in quite that
tone. He had always been the gentleman, but never yet the eager
gentleman. Now he was unmistakably both.

She came back and sat down, and so with a sigh of thankfulness
immediately did he, for here was an unexpected respite,--while Mrs.
Bilton talked he could think. Fortunately she never noticed if one
wasn't listening. For the first time since he had known her he gave
himself up willingly to the great broad stream that at once started
flowing over him, on this occasion with something of the comfort of
warm water, and he was very glad indeed that anyhow that day she wasn't
gagged.

While he ate, he kept on furtively looking down the garden at the two
figures facing each other by the arum lilies. Whenever Mrs. Bilton
remembered them and wanted to call them in, as she did at the different
stages, of the meal,--at the salad, at the pudding--he stopped her. She
became more and more pleased by his evident determination to lunch alone
with her, for after all one remains female to the end, and her
conversation took on a gradual tinge of Mr. Bilton's views about second
marriages. They had been liberal views; for Mr. Bilton, she said, had
had no post-mortem pettiness about him, but they were lost on Mr. Twist,
whose thoughts were so painfully preoccupied by first marriage.

The conclusions he came to during that trying meal while Mrs. Bilton
talked, were that he would propose first to Anna-Rose, she being the
eldest and such a course being accordingly natural, and, if she refused,
proceed at once to propose to Anna-Felicitas. But before proceeding to
Anna-Felicitas, a course he regarded with peculiar misgiving, he would
very earnestly explain to Anna-Rose the seriousness of the situation and
the necessity, the urgency, the sanity of her marrying him. These
proposals would be kept on the cool level of strict business. Every
trace of the affection with which he was so overflowing would be sternly
excluded. For instance, he wasn't going to let himself remember the feel
of Christopher's little head the afternoon before when he patted it to
comfort her. Such remembrances would be bound to bring a warmth into his
remarks which wouldn't be fair. The situation demanded the most
scrupulous fairness and delicacy in its treatment, the most careful
avoidance of taking any advantage of it. But how difficult, thought Mr.
Twist, his hand shaking as he poured himself out a glass of iced water,
how difficult when he loved the Annas so inconveniently much.

Mrs. Bilton observed the shaking of his hand, and felt more female than
ever.

Still, there it was, this situation forced upon them all by the war.
Nobody could help it, and it had to be faced with calmness,
steadfastness and tact. Calmness, steadfastness and tact, repeated Mr.
Twist, raising the water to his mouth and spilling some of it.

Mrs. Bilton observed this too, and felt still more female.

Marriage was the quickest, and really the only, way out of it. He saw
that now. The lawyer had been quite right. And marriage, he would
explain to the Annas, would be a mere formal ceremony which after the
war they--he meant, of course, she--could easily in that land of facile
and honourable divorce get rid of. Meanwhile, he would point out,
they--she, of course; bother these twins--would be safely American, and
he would undertake never to intrude love on them--her--unless by some
wonderful chance, it was wanted. Some wonderful chance ... Mr. Twist's
spectacles suddenly went dim, and he gulped down more water.

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